With the increasing penetration of smart phones, easy availability and access to network infrastructure, and reduced prices of mobile data services, use of internet data has proliferated over years and is continuing to increase. As such, users are now able to access a wide range of services over applications, which are downloaded and installed on the smart phones. Examples of such applications include chat applications, mail applications, browser applications, messaging applications, e-commerce applications, social media applications, data based media applications, location-based service (LBS) applications, and search applications. In addition, the users are now able to connect with other users and share data such as images, videos, and music through various applications such as chat application and voice over IP (VOIP) applications. Moreover, quality of data being shared or accessed has improved dramatically. For example, present videos being shared or accessed are in high definition format. However, such an extensive usage has led to dramatic increase in consumption of network bandwidth. Consequently, network overload problems have increased resulting in poor user experience and increase in mobile data expenses over the period of data plan.
Various solutions are available that allow a user to manage the data usage among different applications and save data expenses. In one solution, in a networked environment, a central server monitors network or data access of client computers based on predefined rules indicating permission to data access. However, such solution necessities client-server architecture which cannot cater to individual needs. In addition, such solution requires an administration/supervisor to control the data access, thereby denying a simple control to individual users.
In another solution, the smart phones are manufactured/configured with data restriction features. In one another solution, applications providing data restriction features are downloaded and installed on the smart phones. In both solutions, the user selects applications installed on the smart phones and accordingly data access to the selected application is completely restricted. Thus, both foreground activities such as transmitting & receiving messages in chat sessions and background activities such as checking with an external server for updates are completely restricted. Further, the user can provide a threshold value of data usage in terms of percentage of total mobile data plan limit or a specific value of mobile data usage. When the data usage reaches the threshold value, the selected applications are automatically and completed blocked/restricted from accessing network.
However, in such solutions, the user has to navigate through the data restricting feature or application each time to select/deselect applications for managing the data usage. In addition, the selected applications are completely restricted from accessing network and the non-selected applications are completely allowed to access the network. Such management of data usage does not cater to individual user needs, thereby resulting in poor management of data usage.
In yet another solution, a network performance of a current foreground application is increased by allocating of entire network bandwidth to the current foreground application only. However, such solution is directed towards enhancing network performance or increasing network bandwidth for a single application only. Consequently, the other applications are deprived of the network bandwidth. Further, these solutions do not provide flexibility to users to manage the data usage according to individual needs. Thus, there exists a need for a solution to enable a user for managing application data usage in a quick and effective manner.